Chapter 3

Boubacar Traoré was late, and made it a point of principle.

“He is always late for introductions,” Amina said, as she and Julian waited in the shade of a mud-brick wall at the edge of the old port quarter. “He says first meetings are for watching, and you cannot watch properly if you arrive on time and spend the first ten minutes being polite.”

“Is he watching now?”

“Certainly.”

Julian glanced down the lane. A man was sitting on an upturned crate outside a tea stall some thirty meters away, drinking from a small glass and reading something on his phone. He had been there when they arrived. Julian had assumed he was a customer.

The man finished his tea, stood, shook out his indigo robe, and strolled over with the unhurried gait of someone who has never in his life run for a bus. He was in his late thirties, broad through the shoulders, with a close-cropped beard going grey at the chin and the permanent faint squint of a man who has looked at a great deal of horizon. He gave Julian a long, frank, not unfriendly inspection, from boots to hat.

“Your boots are new,” he said.

“They’re broken in.”

“They are broken in the way a donkey is broken in by a child.” Boubacar’s French was quick and dry, with a flat Songhai rhythm underneath. “Amina says you are careful. I have seen careful men. They bring four kinds of sunscreen and no spare tire.” He held out a hand. “Boubacar. I am the cousin. I am also the one who will have to carry you home if you are stupid, so I would like to know in advance how stupid you are.”

“I’ll try to be efficient about it,” said Julian, and shook the hand, and was gratified to see one corner of Boubacar’s mouth move.

They took the questions in the shade of a courtyard behind Boubacar’s house in the Abaradjou quarter, on low stools around a table where his wife, Hawa, had set out a bowl of dates and a jug of water with a cloth over its mouth. She greeted Julian with grave courtesy and vanished into the kitchen, from which came a smell of onions and something frying that made Julian’s stomach turn over with hope.

Boubacar did not look at the maps. He looked at Julian.

“How much water?”

“Twenty liters per person per day, for drinking and cooking. We’ll carry extra in jerricans, and the vehicles—”

“For how many days?”

“Our current plan is twenty-one.”

“And if you are not back in twenty-one?”

“Then we carry a reserve of—”

“What reserve?”

Julian opened his mouth, and found that he had to think. He had a figure. It was in a spreadsheet. But he had made the spreadsheet for a conference presentation, and he realized, with some discomfort, that it had been made by a man who expected it to be read, not drunk.

“Three extra days,” he said.

“Five,” said Boubacar. “Minimum. A vehicle breaks. A well is dry. A man is sick and cannot drive. Three days is what you take when you are sure of everything, and in the desert you are sure of nothing.” He took a date, ate it, spat the stone neatly into his palm. “Communications?”

“A satellite phone. A beacon, the kind that sends a position and an emergency signal.”

“Both heavy when you are not dead. Both useful when you are. Do you carry them yourself, or in the vehicle?”

“In the vehicle.”

“Carry them on your body. Always. Vehicles burn.” He said it without drama. “How many vehicles?”

“I had thought two. Land Cruisers, with a mechanic.”

“Three. One carries only fuel and water and travels apart from the others in the order, so that if two are lost, the third is not. My brother-in-law has one that is older than I am and has never failed.” He tapped the table. “What happens if we are stopped?”

“By whom?”

Boubacar looked at him for a moment, the way one might look at a child who has asked what electricity is. “By anyone,” he said. “That is the answer to your question. Soldiers. Police. Men who say they are soldiers or police. Men who are simply men, with a truck, and a gun, and a good idea. I do not ask who they are. I ask whether we have the papers, and the money to be polite, and the courage to be polite for a long time.”